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<blockquote data-quote="Haffrung" data-source="post: 6356791" data-attributes="member: 6776259">Check out the Vault of Larin Karr, or Ancient Kingdoms: Mesopotamia.The thing is, there's a lot of content in conventional linear adventures that you don't need in sandboxes. Lengthy NPC backgrounds, cut-scene descriptions and dialog (&quot;Excellent, you've recovered the staff of Mallazizi! Now we can cast the enchantment to open the Gates of Azathoth and rescue the duke&quot; etc. etc.). You can ditch that stuff altogether in a sandbox. And you need to be very compact in the NPC backgrounds. Instead of half a page, you need to cover that stuff in a short paragraph. Basically, write the setting with physical description only. Put the faction and events section in a very compact format in another part of the book. Let the DM and the players develop the rest organically.And of course, you need a DM who is comfortable with some improvisation. You can't cover every edge case, and you will have some 'wasted' material. But in my experience, I get a lot more game sessions out of a sandbox book than a similarly-sized linear adventure. At 112 pages, the Vault of Larin Karr has enough content for 5 levels, or around 15-20 sessions of play. And that's even taking into account that the party will likely skip/miss a quarter of the content in the book. Another factor to consider is that it's easier to reuse sandbox content than story-driven content. A town can continue to be a base of operations, a basilisk lair that wasn't visited can be reused elsewhere, as can the band of gnolls that weren't encountered. When this stuff isn't embedded into a story, it tends to easier to lift out intact.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Haffrung, post: 6356791, member: 6776259"] Check out the Vault of Larin Karr, or Ancient Kingdoms: Mesopotamia. The thing is, there's a lot of content in conventional linear adventures that you don't need in sandboxes. Lengthy NPC backgrounds, cut-scene descriptions and dialog ("Excellent, you've recovered the staff of Mallazizi! Now we can cast the enchantment to open the Gates of Azathoth and rescue the duke" etc. etc.). You can ditch that stuff altogether in a sandbox. And you need to be very compact in the NPC backgrounds. Instead of half a page, you need to cover that stuff in a short paragraph. Basically, write the setting with physical description only. Put the faction and events section in a very compact format in another part of the book. Let the DM and the players develop the rest organically. And of course, you need a DM who is comfortable with some improvisation. You can't cover every edge case, and you will have some 'wasted' material. But in my experience, I get a lot more game sessions out of a sandbox book than a similarly-sized linear adventure. At 112 pages, the Vault of Larin Karr has enough content for 5 levels, or around 15-20 sessions of play. And that's even taking into account that the party will likely skip/miss a quarter of the content in the book. Another factor to consider is that it's easier to reuse sandbox content than story-driven content. A town can continue to be a base of operations, a basilisk lair that wasn't visited can be reused elsewhere, as can the band of gnolls that weren't encountered. When this stuff isn't embedded into a story, it tends to easier to lift out intact. [/QUOTE]

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